At this meeting, we discussed blended learning. Bruce Gillespie began the discussion with an overview of how he uses screencasts and online quizzes to help his first-year journalism students improve their writing and learn about Canadian Press Style. While he used to spend a lot of lecture time discussing these issues, students are now responsible for this learning themselves. They watch and listen to one or two short screencasts (PowerPoint presentations with an audio narration, saved as an .mov file) on MyLS every week and then complete an online quiz to demonstrate their learning.This not only frees up class time for other, more meaningful activities but allows students to revisit and re-watch the screencasts as necessary throughout the semester. Discussion ensued about how to use blended learning in other scenarios, including creating screencast explanations of key concepts for students to review (and/or having students work in groups to create such screencasts themselves), offering contextual background, offering more examples than class time allows for and offering answers to questions posed in class that there was not enough time to answer properly. We also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of linking screencasts to assessments.
Monday, February 25, 2013
At this meeting, we discussed some of the worst, most humbling experiences we've had in the classroom--and what we were able to learn from them. We dished about our most embarrassing teaching moments in the spirit of fun and commiseration and sharing our hard-learned lessons with colleagues who could learn from our mistakes and avoid repeating them. Monday, January 21, 2013
At this gathering of the Brantford Teaching and Learning CoP, we had an open discussion about how to generate more and better class discussion and participation. We came up with a number of ideas on how to do this, including:
- start class with a provocative question related to the reading for that day.
- call on all students to answer questions or provide feedback, using the class list.
- explain to students what you, as the instructor, see as the pedagogical value and benefit of class discussion to them.
- combine the attendance grade with a participation grade to encourage more students to participate.
- ask students to submit questions in writing, or online, for discussion at the following class. Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Jenna Olender and Christina Michener, from the Learning Services Centre, joined us at our December gathering to talk about the four most common issues they see in students that visit them. They also offered a couple of ideas about how instructors can help students address some of these issues.
1. Students don’t understand the assignment instructions.
Jenna and Christina said they’re seeing more students who don’t understand what they’re being asked to do in a given assignment. While this has always been an issue for some students, particularly those in first year, they’ve seen more of these issues crop up this year, with more students needing some kind of hand-holding to understand what an assignment requires of them. Students seem to be feeling more overwhelmed and anxious about their performance than in the past.
There are two variations of this issue: students who struggle when there are too many instructions and students who struggle when there are not enough instructions.
In the former case, some of the problems stem from an inconsistency within the instructions and there being too many details for students to parse successfully on their own. Additionally, students sometimes struggle with assignment instructions that assume that everyone works through a project in the same way, e.g., starting with an outline. Jenna noted that many students don’t work this way naturally, so providing other options instead of an outline (such as project proposals, the development of research questions, critical reflections, idea maps, visual brainstorming) may help students be more successful.
On the flip side, students sometimes struggle when there are not enough instructions. Christina and Jenna said they’ve seen situations when an instructor has asked students to pick their own topics for an assignment, which for many students is too broad and they end up picking a topic that is not related to the course material. So it’s important to be explicit that picking your own topic means picking a topic that is relevant to what’s being studied in addition to being interesting to the student.
Learning Services offers a number of different writing programs -- including a pre-writing service that helps students decode assignment instructions and plan their work -- as well as the Writing Well workshop that is an hour a week for six weeks. Jenna said this usually attracts six or seven students in the fall; this semester, they had 45 students.
2. Students have had their confidence shaken.
Many students, especially in first year, experience getting a low grade for the first time, whether it’s a failing grade or just a disappointingly low grade. As a result, they may withdraw and not ask for help even when they probably need it.
Learning Services offers a GPA Program with Counselling Services, Academic Advising, Accessible Learning and Career Services to help such students. While this was once a program for students on academic probation, it’s now offered to anyone worried about their grades and the possibility of going on academic probation or even being downgraded from an honours degree to a general degree. The centre also offers a Bouncing Back workshop with Counselling Services in early January to help students cope with lower-than-expected marks and get back on track.
3. Students don’t understand the readings.
Understanding readings is a perennial challenge for many students. Students often misjudge how much time they need to read and understand articles and don’t appreciate that reading an academic article requires different skills and than recreational reading.
Learning Services offers various workshops and consultation services to help students learn how to read academic articles and make sense of them. They also offer personalized study schedules: they sit down with students at the beginning of a semester and develop weekly reading schedules to help them keep on track.
Librarian Irene Tencinger also noted that when assigning articles from e-books, it’s good to check whether they allow for multiple users or single-use only. Some e-books can only be used by one user at a time, so that can make it difficult if an entire class is trying to look at it during the same week.
4. Students who are non-native English speakers face additional challenges.
Writing and participating actively in class can be challenging and stressful for students whose first language is not English. Such students may benefit from workshops offered by Learning Services on how to make successful presentations, as well as their various writing services.
Jenna also wanted to raise awareness about accepting accent in writing. While many instructors accept accented spoken English, we tend not to do so in writing, and so students stress over producing flawless writing when they could be concentrating on demonstrating their understanding of the material and concepts instead. The centre offers a variety of services to non-native English speakers, including peer volunteers who help them work on conversational skills and help them with course-specific work like study buddies.
Jenna and Christina left us with two final thoughts, a sort of wish list from the Learning Services Centre. First, they suggested that instructors not assume that students are not already working with someone at the centre, even if their writing might suggest otherwise. It takes time for a student to improve his or her writing, even with assistance, and having an instructor assume that they aren’t trying can be discouraging. As such, instead of suggesting to an individual student that he or she seek assistance from the centre, it may be better to give such advice to the class as a whole.
Second, it’s helpful for instructors to be clear about what is a personal or disciplinary preference. Sometimes, instructors may imply that a particular citation style or preference (e.g., using a serial comma) is definitively correct, when it is, in fact, merely a preference. Being clear about what is a disciplinary or personal preference helps students understand what is required of them in a certain class while also exposing them to the idea that different instructors and disciplines have different preferences and that there is probably not one right way to cite or write something.
Monday, November 19, 2012
At this meeting, Indigenous Studies Liaison officer Darren Thomas led a discussed on how better to support Aboriginal students in our classes and how to incorporate more Aboriginal ways of knowing in our teaching for the benefit of all students. He began by making the important distinction that there is no one way to talk about the Aboriginal perspective or the Aboriginal way of knowing. Because there is such a diversity of different indigenous peoples across the country, there are countless different worldviews, many of which are quite different from each other. What they have in common is that they are all markedly different from the western worldview, and it's important to acknowledge this.
Darren then led us through some of his own research that involves learning about the Haudenosaunee ways of knowing and understanding the world. He noted the importance of aboriginal researchers being able to articulate their knowledge and "translate" it for a western audience. As such, he has created what he called a Haudenosaunee epistemology that would be understandable to scholars trained in western epistemologies and western research methodology. The model he's developed to illustrate makes it clear how Haudenosaunee knowledge is relational and subjective and connected to the world around us. We finished off with a discussion of how instructors and academic staff can apply this knowledge in their work with students.
Darren also shared some resources with the group, some of which are listed below:
Marie Battiste. (2000). Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision. UBC Press.
Margaret Kovach. (2010). Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts. University of Toronto Press.
Leanne Simpson. (2008). The Liberation, Resurgence, and Protection of Indigenous Nations. Arbeiter Ring Publishing.
Linda Tuhiwai Smith. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books.
Monday, October 22, 2012
The inaugural meeting of the Laurier Brantford Teaching and Learning Community of Practice (CoP) began with Chair Bruce Gillespie providing a brief explanation of how CoPs operate and reviewing some of the CoP guidelines. Participants then engaged in a check-in about how their semesters were going, discussing some of their early successes and/or challenges so far.
We also brainstormed about potential discussion topics for future meetings and settled on topics for the remaining two meetings in 2012. At our November 19th meeting, Indigenous Studies Liaison Officer Darren Thomas has generously offered to facilitate an informal discussion about how to better support Aboriginal students in the classroom and with assignments, as well as how to draw on Aboriginal ways of knowing and learning for the benefit of all students. At our December 3rd meeting, Jenna Olender and Christina Michener, of Laurier Brantford's Learning Services Centre, have kindly offered to lead an informal discussion about student learning needs, the types of advice students commonly seek from them and the types of issues they see with student work. They will also speak about the supports they offer students and faculty and discuss some of the innovative in-class programs they're working on.
The group also came up with a number of other topics for meetings of the CoP in the new year, including:
- how to create more links between faculty and student affairs to better support faculty to whom students may disclose personal experiences of sexual and/or domestic violence, coming-out concerns and/or other personal issues.
- how to structure and teach seminar-style courses.
- how to guide and facilitate in-class discussion.
- how to create better writing assignments.
- how to incorporate technology in the classroom successfully (e.g., iClickers, PowerPoint presentations, live feedback streams).
- active learning strategies for the classroom.
- how to help students make better presentations.
At this meeting, we discussed blended learning. Bruce Gillespie began the discussion with an overview of how he uses screencasts and online quizzes to help his first-year journalism students improve their writing and learn about Canadian Press Style. While he used to spend a lot of lecture time discussing these issues, students are now responsible for this learning themselves. They watch and listen to one or two short screencasts (PowerPoint presentations with an audio narration, saved as an .mov file) on MyLS every week and then complete an online quiz to demonstrate their learning.This not only frees up class time for other, more meaningful activities but allows students to revisit and re-watch the screencasts as necessary throughout the semester. Discussion ensued about how to use blended learning in other scenarios, including creating screencast explanations of key concepts for students to review (and/or having students work in groups to create such screencasts themselves), offering contextual background, offering more examples than class time allows for and offering answers to questions posed in class that there was not enough time to answer properly. We also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of linking screencasts to assessments.
Monday, February 25, 2013
At this meeting, we discussed some of the worst, most humbling experiences we've had in the classroom--and what we were able to learn from them. We dished about our most embarrassing teaching moments in the spirit of fun and commiseration and sharing our hard-learned lessons with colleagues who could learn from our mistakes and avoid repeating them.
Monday, January 21, 2013
At this gathering of the Brantford Teaching and Learning CoP, we had an open discussion about how to generate more and better class discussion and participation. We came up with a number of ideas on how to do this, including:
- start class with a provocative question related to the reading for that day.
- call on all students to answer questions or provide feedback, using the class list.
- explain to students what you, as the instructor, see as the pedagogical value and benefit of class discussion to them.
- combine the attendance grade with a participation grade to encourage more students to participate.
- ask students to submit questions in writing, or online, for discussion at the following class.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Jenna Olender and Christina Michener, from the Learning Services Centre, joined us at our December gathering to talk about the four most common issues they see in students that visit them. They also offered a couple of ideas about how instructors can help students address some of these issues.
1. Students don’t understand the assignment instructions.
Jenna and Christina said they’re seeing more students who don’t understand what they’re being asked to do in a given assignment. While this has always been an issue for some students, particularly those in first year, they’ve seen more of these issues crop up this year, with more students needing some kind of hand-holding to understand what an assignment requires of them. Students seem to be feeling more overwhelmed and anxious about their performance than in the past.
There are two variations of this issue: students who struggle when there are too many instructions and students who struggle when there are not enough instructions.
In the former case, some of the problems stem from an inconsistency within the instructions and there being too many details for students to parse successfully on their own. Additionally, students sometimes struggle with assignment instructions that assume that everyone works through a project in the same way, e.g., starting with an outline. Jenna noted that many students don’t work this way naturally, so providing other options instead of an outline (such as project proposals, the development of research questions, critical reflections, idea maps, visual brainstorming) may help students be more successful.
On the flip side, students sometimes struggle when there are not enough instructions. Christina and Jenna said they’ve seen situations when an instructor has asked students to pick their own topics for an assignment, which for many students is too broad and they end up picking a topic that is not related to the course material. So it’s important to be explicit that picking your own topic means picking a topic that is relevant to what’s being studied in addition to being interesting to the student.
Learning Services offers a number of different writing programs -- including a pre-writing service that helps students decode assignment instructions and plan their work -- as well as the Writing Well workshop that is an hour a week for six weeks. Jenna said this usually attracts six or seven students in the fall; this semester, they had 45 students.
2. Students have had their confidence shaken.
Many students, especially in first year, experience getting a low grade for the first time, whether it’s a failing grade or just a disappointingly low grade. As a result, they may withdraw and not ask for help even when they probably need it.
Learning Services offers a GPA Program with Counselling Services, Academic Advising, Accessible Learning and Career Services to help such students. While this was once a program for students on academic probation, it’s now offered to anyone worried about their grades and the possibility of going on academic probation or even being downgraded from an honours degree to a general degree. The centre also offers a Bouncing Back workshop with Counselling Services in early January to help students cope with lower-than-expected marks and get back on track.
3. Students don’t understand the readings.
Understanding readings is a perennial challenge for many students. Students often misjudge how much time they need to read and understand articles and don’t appreciate that reading an academic article requires different skills and than recreational reading.
Learning Services offers various workshops and consultation services to help students learn how to read academic articles and make sense of them. They also offer personalized study schedules: they sit down with students at the beginning of a semester and develop weekly reading schedules to help them keep on track.
Librarian Irene Tencinger also noted that when assigning articles from e-books, it’s good to check whether they allow for multiple users or single-use only. Some e-books can only be used by one user at a time, so that can make it difficult if an entire class is trying to look at it during the same week.
4. Students who are non-native English speakers face additional challenges.
Writing and participating actively in class can be challenging and stressful for students whose first language is not English. Such students may benefit from workshops offered by Learning Services on how to make successful presentations, as well as their various writing services.
Jenna also wanted to raise awareness about accepting accent in writing. While many instructors accept accented spoken English, we tend not to do so in writing, and so students stress over producing flawless writing when they could be concentrating on demonstrating their understanding of the material and concepts instead. The centre offers a variety of services to non-native English speakers, including peer volunteers who help them work on conversational skills and help them with course-specific work like study buddies.
Jenna and Christina left us with two final thoughts, a sort of wish list from the Learning Services Centre. First, they suggested that instructors not assume that students are not already working with someone at the centre, even if their writing might suggest otherwise. It takes time for a student to improve his or her writing, even with assistance, and having an instructor assume that they aren’t trying can be discouraging. As such, instead of suggesting to an individual student that he or she seek assistance from the centre, it may be better to give such advice to the class as a whole.
Second, it’s helpful for instructors to be clear about what is a personal or disciplinary preference. Sometimes, instructors may imply that a particular citation style or preference (e.g., using a serial comma) is definitively correct, when it is, in fact, merely a preference. Being clear about what is a disciplinary or personal preference helps students understand what is required of them in a certain class while also exposing them to the idea that different instructors and disciplines have different preferences and that there is probably not one right way to cite or write something.
Monday, November 19, 2012
At this meeting, Indigenous Studies Liaison officer Darren Thomas led a discussed on how better to support Aboriginal students in our classes and how to incorporate more Aboriginal ways of knowing in our teaching for the benefit of all students. He began by making the important distinction that there is no one way to talk about the Aboriginal perspective or the Aboriginal way of knowing. Because there is such a diversity of different indigenous peoples across the country, there are countless different worldviews, many of which are quite different from each other. What they have in common is that they are all markedly different from the western worldview, and it's important to acknowledge this.
Darren then led us through some of his own research that involves learning about the Haudenosaunee ways of knowing and understanding the world. He noted the importance of aboriginal researchers being able to articulate their knowledge and "translate" it for a western audience. As such, he has created what he called a Haudenosaunee epistemology that would be understandable to scholars trained in western epistemologies and western research methodology. The model he's developed to illustrate makes it clear how Haudenosaunee knowledge is relational and subjective and connected to the world around us. We finished off with a discussion of how instructors and academic staff can apply this knowledge in their work with students.
Darren also shared some resources with the group, some of which are listed below:
Marie Battiste. (2000). Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision. UBC Press.
Margaret Kovach. (2010). Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts. University of Toronto Press.
Leanne Simpson. (2008). The Liberation, Resurgence, and Protection of Indigenous Nations. Arbeiter Ring Publishing.
Linda Tuhiwai Smith. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books.
Monday, October 22, 2012
The inaugural meeting of the Laurier Brantford Teaching and Learning Community of Practice (CoP) began with Chair Bruce Gillespie providing a brief explanation of how CoPs operate and reviewing some of the CoP guidelines. Participants then engaged in a check-in about how their semesters were going, discussing some of their early successes and/or challenges so far.
We also brainstormed about potential discussion topics for future meetings and settled on topics for the remaining two meetings in 2012. At our November 19th meeting, Indigenous Studies Liaison Officer Darren Thomas has generously offered to facilitate an informal discussion about how to better support Aboriginal students in the classroom and with assignments, as well as how to draw on Aboriginal ways of knowing and learning for the benefit of all students. At our December 3rd meeting, Jenna Olender and Christina Michener, of Laurier Brantford's Learning Services Centre, have kindly offered to lead an informal discussion about student learning needs, the types of advice students commonly seek from them and the types of issues they see with student work. They will also speak about the supports they offer students and faculty and discuss some of the innovative in-class programs they're working on.
The group also came up with a number of other topics for meetings of the CoP in the new year, including:
- how to create more links between faculty and student affairs to better support faculty to whom students may disclose personal experiences of sexual and/or domestic violence, coming-out concerns and/or other personal issues.
- how to structure and teach seminar-style courses.
- how to guide and facilitate in-class discussion.
- how to create better writing assignments.
- how to incorporate technology in the classroom successfully (e.g., iClickers, PowerPoint presentations, live feedback streams).
- active learning strategies for the classroom.
- how to help students make better presentations.